Training Development Lead

This role is an exciting opportunity for a passionate and skilled training developer to join our growing charity, to develop two eLearning courses that support our goals to train school chefs nationwide. This role will transform our existing flagship Chef Educator programme into a bitesize eLearning course and create a new School Food Standards course, making high-quality chef training accessible, practical and engaging for every school chef.

Who we are

Chefs in Schools is a young, ambitious charity that’s rapidly growing. Our mission is to improve kids' health, through improving school food & food education.

We focus our efforts in areas of high socio-economic deprivation, where more than a third of children are entitled to free school meals, and diet-related disease is driving further inequality.

We support and train school kitchen teams to serve the best, freshest and tastiest food possible, alongside meaningful food education. We share learning and resources, aiming to inspire and enable others to follow our lead.

We’re backed by some of the biggest names in food and have ambitious targets to ensure every child has access to incredible school food and food education, setting them up for life with the skills and knowledge to feed themselves well.

About you and the role

We are looking for a creative and systematic Training Development Lead to help us develop two eLearning training courses to support school chefs across the country engage with professional development.

In this role, you will lead two key training projects. First, you will take the lead on a major digital transformation, evolving our existing flagship School Chef Educator programme, which is currently a 10-week hybrid model, into a streamlined, high-quality, eLearning training course. Working closely with the Chef Educator team, you will transform the course content into a bitesize, accessible online course that will be available nationally. You will work with school chefs to feed into the design, delivery, and pilot of the course, embedding feedback loops to ensure early improvements. You will work with our evaluation team to ensure the course meets our organisation’s goals, whilst embedding impact and evaluation metrics into the back end of the course design.

Second, you will lead the creation of a brand-new eLearning course focused on School Food Standards

Training for school chefs is currently not mandatory, nor commonplace, a core mission of ours to change, therefore the online-only courses need to truly meet the requirements of trainees, with every minute of training being practical, engaging and delivering high-impact.

The responsibilities, skills and experience listed below are intended to give you an idea of what we need for this role. If you don’t meet every requirement but feel you would be able to work with us to deliver the majority of them, we urge you to apply anyway. We are dedicated to building a diverse and inclusive workplace, and for us the most important ‘experience’ is passion for our mission. You may be just the right candidate for this or other roles. We encourage applicants from all backgrounds, especially those from underrepresented communities, to apply.

We want to get to know you at the interview and understand we can do this best if you’re at ease. We’re an inclusive employer and work hard to create a welcoming working environment for everyone, including appointing a neurodiversity champion to help us identify how we can make our work environment work for everyone. If you need adjustments to the interview process please let us know.

As we work with children & young people, an offer of employment will be subject to satisfactory references and DBS clearance, in line with our safeguarding policy.

Key responsibilities:

Your primary objective is to create two eLearning training courses for school chefs; School Chef Educator & School Food Standards. Your day-to-day will involve:

• Audit the existing 10-week hybrid School Chef Educator programme and reimagining its delivery for a 100% digital environment.
• Design and develop the end-to-end eLearning course for the School Food Standards, ensuring it is accessible, interactive, and compliant with English regulations.
• Work with Programme Managers, Chef Trainers and the Chief Innovation Officer for content information and development of both courses.

Essential skills & experience:

• Experience in developing eLearning training courses from scratch, ideally within a Learning Management System (LMS) environment.
• Experience of successfully converting face-to-face or hybrid training into fully digital formats that maintain high levels of learner engagement.
• You are able to translate technical or complex language into clear, understandable communications.
• You have experience in developing videos for training courses.

Desirable skills & experience:

• Experience in school catering or the UK education sector
• Experience of the charity sector, and the ability to identify where training outcomes can amplify long-term impact
• The ability to contribute to the creation of training materials or resources that add value to the membership programme.
• An understanding of the challenges and opportunities of working in school food and school catering work environments.

Benefits

You would be joining a friendly, supportive team who works hard but believe in a healthy work/life balance. We were voted one of CODE Hospitality’s happiest places to work in 2024. We seek a diverse range of perspectives, skills, experience and knowledge. Joining a small, collaborative team means you’ll be able to contribute to and draw on various projects and strategic insights.

We offer 33 days of holiday per year including bank holidays, 3 additional office closure days over the Christmas period as well as wellbeing days over the summer school holidays. We also have a Cycle to Work scheme, hybrid working, enhanced parental leave, and free access to the CODE app for discounted restaurants & hospitality venues. We are committed to developing our team and will support you with relevant training opportunities including £250 towards elective training and development of your choice.

We also offer Bupa Dental Insurance, Income Protection Insurance, as well as access to the Aviva Smart Health Platform which offers health benefits including free rapid access online GP appointments, free counselling and wellbeing support.

Application process

In line with our commitment to ensuring a fair and unbiased recruitment process, we invite candidates to answer a series of questions related to their day-to-day job. Please follow this link to answer the questions and submit your application along with your CV.

We recommend that you develop your answers offline and copy them in when you’re ready to ensure you don’t lose your work if interrupted.

Your answers will go through our sifting process: all answers will be anonymised, randomised and then reviewed by a panel of reviewers. A long list of candidates will then additionally have their CVs reviewed. Shortlisted candidates will be invited to a 30 mins online interview. Successful candidates will be invited to attend a second, in-person interview at our office in Brixton, London.

Expected duration of this application process: 4 weeks

In line with our commitment to ensuring a fair and unbiased recruitment process, we will invite candidates to interview based on their answers to a series of questions related to their day-to-day job.

The deadline for applications is midday on 20th March 2026.

Shortlisted candidates will be invited to an online 30-minute interview to take place on 26th March 2026.

Successful candidates will be invited to an in-person second interview on 1st April 2026 to be held at our office in Brixton, London. The interview overall will take a maximum of one hour.

We are looking for someone who can start with immediate effect in April.

Please click on the apply button to progress with your application.